The Iberian third space in a novel by a Catalan exiled in Mexico: Language(s) in "Paraules d’Opoton el Vell" by Avel·lí Artís Gener
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[1] Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma State University
Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Catalan Review: international journal of Catalan culture, ISSN 0213-5949, Vol. 31, 2017, págs. 59-78
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This essay argues that the treatment of languages in the novel Paraules d’Opoton el Vell (1968) [Words by Opoton the Elder], written by the Catalan author Avel·lí Artís Gener during his exile in Mexico, opens a third space between Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s deterritorialization, and Walter Mignolo’s decoloniality, in a way that engages with both these ideas as it distances itself from them. Through the use of multiple languages and registers, the questioning of names, the creation of new words, and translations, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell deterritorializes language. However, by including a multiplicity of languages, it questions Deleuze and Guattari’s focus on minor languages as forces that deterritorialize the major language. At the same time, the variety of languages introduced in the novel shows the colonial difference while proposing a pluriversality like the one Mignolo links to the decolonial option. Nevertheless, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell cannot be completely lined up with decolonial criticism because its border thinking pivots around languages more than around epistemological conflicts. The third space portrayed in Paraules evokes the approach proposed by Iberian studies, in between conceptualizations that critique hegemony from both a regional and a pluriversal locus of enunciation that touches on interior and exterior borders
